merry christmas! i hope that those of you who celebrate it, or at least have a festive time based on christmas, had a fine one! this morning i woke up before the kids, which was nice in a way. last night hiro had a very difficult time getting to sleep, and kept asking where santa was. lol yoshi prepared the hot water bottle while i was lying down with hiro and sasha, and you should have seen the way hiro popped up when yoshi opened the door to give it to us. he must have thought it was santa coming with presents! lol

hiro woke up first, and the first thing he noticed were the cookies eaten by santa! then he wanted cereal milk (breakfast). too funny. finally he noticed the stockings were stuffed, so he wanted to check them out. i made him wait until sasha woke up (which wasn't until nearly eight!) i called my mom and she actually talked with us until all the presents were opened and admired. very sweet.

we try to keep the presents to a minimum...i remember splendid christmases with loads of toys, but here we don't have so much room, plus yoshi doesn't like a lot of clutter, so the kids only got presents from my mom & dad, my brother and santa (i feel like a grinch...i hadn't quite noticed that nothing was from us! but...the kids get plenty of things during the year, plus their birthdays are in august and october, so they just got presents then.) santa brought hiro and sasha 'spill-proof' bubbles (we'll see...) and tommy got a book. grandma & grandpa got them kid digital cameras (hiro & sasha) while tommy got a xylophone. and uncle john got sasha a baby (with bottle! which we briefly lost in the gap today), hiro some expansion train tracks to match those he's received in the past (and he and sasha are currently fighting over at the moment *sigh*) and tommy a little toy engine from fisher price, which is very cute and very noisy. we also got a christmas card from uncle john today, thanks! :D

the stockings had lots of little goodies, too, so far the balloons and candies are vying for favorite stocking stuffer!

then i was soooo hungry but didn't want to cook, so of course we went to royal host for a pancake breakfast. we had lots of pancakes, some eggs and sausage and drinks for all and only spent about $10. that's a pretty good breakfast if you ask me! lol tommy was a handful, though, thank goodness it's a regular week day in japan so there were minimal customers there.

the highlight of the day was meeting friends for lunch at the hard rock cafe. hey, any excuse to go there!!! after breakfast it was still a bit early to go to HRC, so we went to kashiihama to have donuts (but we didn't!) and have a peek inside TRU, i wanted to get a label maker, mainly to put the kids' names on the digital cameras. we got out of there relatively easily, then got in the car and headed toward the city.

we got there a bit early so OF COURSE we went to baby gap. plenty of winter sales items, and i managed to spend less than $100 (this is a big deal for me! haha) but somehow either hiro or sasha lost the baby's milk bottle, and it was such a tragedy!! *rolls eyes* i was standing in the long line for the register and hiro was wailing that he couldn't find the milk! i had to scold him because *I* didn't lose the milk and i had absolutely no idea where it possibly could be (besides in the gap of course). i asked at the register, but at that moment it hadn't been found and turned in, so i said that we were going to lunch and would be back later in the afternoon.

lunch was fab!! i met up with my two kyushu friends, we usually only see them at golden week. there were four adults and seven kids when we joined. one more family came, but they were 'late' because they had to go to city hall that morning, but i was glad to meet them, it's always nice to make new friends!

after lunch we went back to gap, and actually got our baby's milk back! hiro was very happy about that! by then it was nearly four in the afternoon, and the kids were getting tired. i managed to get them to the car, but it was a close thing...then hiro and sasha fell right asleep, but contrary tommy REFUSED to sleep and didn't sleep until we were nearly home...

now i am trying to prepare pizza because it's easy and i don't have to do too much preparation. merry christmas!